Re: Spanish ll in different dialects

>Mark P. Line (and others) have written.
>
>> Philip Newton said:
>> > From: David Peterson <thatbluecat@...>
>> > [on Mexican |ll|]
>> >> I've only ever heard a mixture between
>> >> [j], [Z] and [dZ]. Both "ll" and "y" get pronounced this way
>> >
>> > A friend of mine, a Japanese who had spent a year or two on Mexico and
>> > picked up a little Spanish, gave me the phrase [dZo mE dZamo <name>],
>> > which confused me since I could imagine [dZ] for |ll| but had never
>> > heard of any pronunciation for |y| but [j]. Yet she insisted that that
>> > was the pronunciation she had learned there.

A well known fact: LL and Y have the same pronunciation throughout American
Spanish, whatever that pronunciation is.

>> I've heard Cubans use [dZ] for |y| in their *English* and always assumed
>> it was because the do the same in their variety of Spanish.
>>
>I suspect a range from [j] > [j\] > [Z] > [dZ] (progressively more closure)
>is permissible in the Spanish speaking world. I'm a little suspicious of

the

>[dZ], however-- perhaps we Americans are hearing their somewhat frictional
>[j\] as our more familiar affricate (this might also apply to the Japanese
>speaker someone mentioned)-- or maybe the Spanish speaker thinks it sounds
>more "American" to use [dZ]. I heard [Z] a lot in Argentina, and
>occasionally [dZ] which I attributed to the Italian background of 50% of

the

>population. (That was 30 some years ago; Pablo Flores usually transcribed
>"ll, y" as [S]. Perhaps there's some on-going change.

The sound is not quite the same as English [dZ]. Alveopalatal perhaps? Hard
to tell, because it's also pronounced more "crisply". I saw a map of the
distribution of ll/y phones somewhere that would be about 50 years old now.
It seems that the affricate was mainly in Argentina, and everybody used a
[j] with just a little friction. Now the stronger sounds seem to be
widespread. The current stereotype of Argentine speech uses [Z], but I
wouldn't be surprised is some have shifted to [S] (which is used elsewhere
sporadically for ch). I once heard a recent arrival from Italy speak
Spanish. She sounded just like the Argentines I'd heard!

>A really long time ago, there was a comedian on TV who went by the name

Bill Dana

>José Jimenez-- I don't think he was actually Hispanic-- and part of his

schtick

>was to pronounce Engl. y as j, and almost every routine included something
>like--
>--Well, José, what were you doing in New Haven?
>--I went to "Jail"
>and so on.............
>(In these PC times, I doubt that an Anglo could get by with parodying the
>accent. Mr. Leguizamo can do it, but he's entitled.)